Islands in the Sky

6.12

Sema knelt behind the ship’s rail, thinking about the woodcutters, and fighting, and wondering whether she ought to try and fight herself.

Wondering whether she ought to fight, or simply run away and hide, and also wondering whether she would actually be useful if she tried to fight, or if she would just get in everyone’s way. She wanted to be useful, but she wasn’t sure she would be. She wasn’t sure she would be able to do much good, since she didn’t know how to fight, and she wasn’t sure she could deliberately hurt someone else either, even someone who was trying to hurt her.

She looked down at the knife in her hand, uncertainly, thinking about using it on another person. She had skinned rabbits before, she supposed, and cut birds’ throats, so she knew what cutting into something alive with a knife felt like.

That didn’t bother her. Birds didn’t bother her.

People might, she thought, but she wasn’t actually sure.

She tried to decide. It seemed important that she knew before this fight actually started. She wouldn’t want to start off thinking she could, and find out she was wrong at the wrong moment. She thought about it, deliberately. She thought about cutting into a person, and exactly how bad that made her feel. It made her feel bad. A little bit bad. Because although it did bother her, it also seemed to matter who the person was, and why she needed to cut them. It mattered whether the person was trying to do her harm, because then, hurting them didn’t feel as wrong, especially not compared to what she imagined being cut with a knife herself would feel like.

That was what it came down to, she supposed. Whether she would rather cut someone else, or be cut herself.

She thought about it, and decided she would rather cut someone else. She wouldn’t want to, but she would do it if she had to. If it was her or them, then she would.

She would because she was scared. She was terrified, and being terrified made her willing to consider this. She was scared like she had been scared during the pirate attack that had killed her family, but this time she could actually do something to help stop people dying. She thought about that. She thought carefully, considering, and decided she was sure. She could actually hurt someone, if she had to. She could cut them, or stab them, mostly because she was afraid. She was far more afraid right now than she was squeamish about pushing a knife into another person. So probably, if she had to, she could do it.

She could cut a person’s throat like a rabbit’s.

She could, she thought, assuming the person stood still long enough to let her, which they wouldn’t. Because of course they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t, and knowing that was actually a relief in an odd way, because it meant she was deciding something that would never actually happen. She didn’t know how to fight with a knife, so she wasn’t actually going to manage to hurt anyone. But if somehow she did, if somehow she had the opportunity to, and hurting someone meant stopping them harming her or someone else on the woodcutters’ ship, then she would try to hurt them.

She would cut them, like they were a rabbit, rather than be killed as her family had been killed.

She felt better for having decided that, even if it never mattered.

She suddenly felt a lot better.

She looked down the ship, at the group of woodcutters, holding their axes, hiding behind the railing like her, and wondered how many other people were making the same decisions as she was. She wondered who was making the same decisions, and whether it bothered them as much it did her.

She hoped it did. It seemed like something that ought to be hard to decide, even if in the end you decided to do it.